Improvements on dash so make data more usefull

Hi all,

i would like to do some suggestions on the dash, i am a few weeks user of the system and actually missing out quite some info that is somewhere in there

the minute and hour graphs work ok for me.
the Day however is not really usefull, at least if i look at a day i want to see today, not the past 24 hours, so the day starts at 00:00h and ends 23:59:59 or something the like.
This would give a clear overview at all times during the day of the performance of the Solar PV and the the amount of energy that is used.
Now with the 24 Hour day i also see during the day a part of what is used yesterday, so i have to wait until midnight to see the days performance in detail.
an addition of a calendar in the day view would be a must to be able to select a day where you want to see the details from to compare for instance monday of last week to monday of this week in performance.

The monthly overview is usefull, but not with a line chart, this should be converted to bar graphs with a bar for each sensor per day, where you can select wich sensors you want to compare or have visible in the graph.

i am not using it long enough to see data in the yearly overview yet so i cannot comment on that.

i would be happy to invest some time to create a mockup to explain what i mean by the above

if this is not possible is there a way that i can connect to the Dash database so i can get my detailed data out of it so i can create my own reporting, either by export on request to .csv or by a webservice?
Maybe a sort of online query designer with an option to save some favorite query's and chose some chart types

Kind regards,
Peter Joris

on3ptz's picture

You can select the day you want in the time bar below, it's only difficult to select the correct time range.

Bart,

I see now the dropdown is gone, wich is is good for many users.

Can you make a combination of both?
I never use night for example even i have a double meter (night at my place is from 21 till 06) (who does use the night option ?)

So make from the night button a dropdown with some extra special combinations like Yesterday, Today, last week, night (how)

i think there was also a request for :

- export function.
- Alarm when to high.
- Alarm when not online
- Temperature probe
- Select time zone ?
- Custom day / night

greetings

Bram

on3ptz's picture

I also a request for a edit funtion in the forum :)

peterjoris's picture

Bram,

That is not correct if you select the time range that is nice but if you use the cumul, then you only can see the last 24h and not today let alone yesterday or even any other day for that matter.
that is nice to see the totals per day and it is not so messy to just select a day then a scroll bar with a selection that is not really accurate
also if you are in the cumul of the day and you select from 00:00 to now, then still you see the cumul of the last 24h so there is a bug in the selection anyway.

the low and high alarms might be usefull as well in my case but i mainly use it as analyses and hope to find trends in the future but then the selection and reporting need to improve or a usable export function

Kind regards,
Peter

peterjoris's picture

Hi Bazzle,

Thanks that is a good tip, i will have a look at that, looks nice...

Peter

icarus75's picture

@Peter You're right about the cumulative function. Since this function has to start at 0 on the y-axis, it didn't play well with the scrollbar. Sliding it to the left would have resulted in negative values. However, snapping the start date to e.g. midnight would make more sense, especially for PV data.

Could you explain why the monthly overview is not useful as a line chart but would be with a bar chart? The information density you can achieve with a line chart is much higher than with a bar chart. Each additional sensor takes up space on the x-axis in the case of a bar chart. So e.g. having month overview for 5 sensors would mean displaying approx. 150 bars. That will not result in a very enlightening chart.

CVS export is on the todo list. You'll find a description of the API in chapter 3 of the Fluksometer Manual. Java, PHP and Ruby bindings have been written against the API.

Cheers,
-Bart.

peterjoris's picture

Bart,

The monthly overview it is not useless of course, but when using PV it is nice to see like a bar of the generation and a line or another bar for total energy usage a simple improvement would be to be able to select which sensors you want to see and if you want a bar or a line for that sensor.
Also what makes it strange to look at is the blocked line charts, it s not connecting points on the chart but blocks for each x min of data which is sometimes confusing to read out.

also the setting on a sensor if it is generation or usage. and the color of the sensor in the charts so it is always the same color

Other than that on general a custom tab where it would be nice to have the ability to create an own report
fi. pie chart for the usage of energy, so if you have multiple sensors you can see how much percentage is spend on the laundry, pool or kitchen.
But this also would need you to be able to query, set begin and end date/time for a period you want to analyze, choose the type of chart and selection on sensors you want to see and do calculations on the results.

Peter

pirlouwi's picture

At home,
- my first sensor measures the power consumption on the wires that come from my electricity provider
- my second sensor measures what is produced by my solar panes.

Currently, the first sensor do not measure the effective consumption. It measures the consumption minus the PV production.
It would be great for me to have the possibility to add my PV production (second sensor) to my first sensor data, in order to see the real consumption of my house.

Is it an eligible mods for a future release?

Cheers,
LOUIS

icarus75's picture

Louis,

Adding/subtracting sensors will not solve your measurement issue. Have a look at this and this forum post for more information on how to solve this.

Cheers,
-Bart.

LB's picture

My preferences for the dash would be the following:
Real time power (watt) reading with sec resolution as it is today.
Hourly power (watt) in minute resolution.
Daily energy usage (Wh) in hour resolution. By daily I mean from 00.00 to 23.59. Nice if so far today (cumulative) could be added.
Higher resolution such as 15 min data could be used for displaying power usage throughout the day perhaps complemented with min (baseline) and max values.
Weekly (calendar) view with daily energy usage (Wh) maybe. Google Powermeter had this feature and I thought it was quite nice. When two weeks are displayed at the same time you get an instant comparison with previous.
Monthly (calendar) view with daily energy usage.
Yearly (calendar) view with monthly energy usage.

A shaded comparison behind the graph would be great. Then you can follow your steps either compared to previous time period eg. last month or same time period last year. Combine it with temperature curves, metered or imported.

Thresholds were in the pipeline and that would be great if you eg. have a peak hour tariff or if you just want to keep track of your energy usage, money spent and power peaks.

FTP input. At Nordpool, the Nordic energy exchange, the hourly energy spot price is set a day in advance and they now share that pricing info via a FTP server.

Manual input of historical energy data from utility bills could be a great foundation for new users to visualise it in a new way.